


The Ill-Advised Backpack

by out_there



Category: Prison Break
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-03
Updated: 2009-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:03:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/out_there/pseuds/out_there
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It starts with the depreciation of a building.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ill-Advised Backpack

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://celli.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**celli**](http://celli.dreamwidth.org/)'s 2009 Taxfic challenge. Like a previous years' tax return, it's a little overdue. Thanks to [](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**oxoniensis**](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/) for betaing.

It starts with a backpack.

***

Or maybe it starts with the depreciation of a building.

***

The incident becomes known as the Ill-Advised Backpack. Alex tells Felicia about it and that's the name she gives it; from then on, when Alex is sitting at a dinner party, sharing stories of campus life and the horrors of teaching, Felicia will mention the Ill-Advised Backpack and Alex will tell the story.

After a while, the phrase "Ill-Advised Backpack" develops a life of its own. Among their group of friends, it becomes a code. It's an embarrassing story, being too drunk and making stupid decisions; it's that moment afterwards, when the mess is all too clear. That's their Ill-Advised Backpack.

It's a joke. Almost.

***

Alex is used to his Introduction to Accounting class. Intro to Acc is what he writes on the whiteboard; Accounting for Dummies is what he thinks to himself. It's 85% business majors, kids who want office jobs and money, suits and a business card with their name on it. The rest are kids filling in their time, filling up their schedules. They're confused-looking English majors complaining about all the math or bored-looking Math majors complaining about the simplicity of the calculations. Sometimes, they're self-expressive artistic types -- kids who get dressed in the dark and then claim it's 'creative individuality' -- who stare back, looking bored and confused.

Alex is used to explaining simple, logical accounting rules over and over. There are always students who argue that adding money to their bank account should be a credit ("Because that's what it says on my bank statement," is a popular excuse, although "the word credit means, like, to add" is another classic) but it makes the first paper interesting to mark.

The question Alex uses is simple: in your own words, explain why accounting standards are important. No references necessary.

Most students copy the textbook definition and fluff it out with pointless repetition, but there are always a couple who actually try to answer the question with original thought.

This year's favorite belongs to one "M. Scofield" who explains that "the most important part of any building structure is its foundation" and carries the 'general financial report as a building' metaphor through the entire 1,000 word paper.

***

The Ill-Advised Backpack story goes like this:

Once upon a time, during last Spring break, a handsome, young accounting lecturer was trapped on campus by the pile of junk charitably known as his car.

Roadside assistance was several hours away and his closest friend had already abandoned the city (Felicia came back with windburn, proving karma sometimes works) so our young hero wandered the school.

Despite knowing better, he let himself be talked into attending one of the 'end of classes' parties, and met someone. Someone with full lips and sharp eyes. Someone with smooth cheeks and strong shoulders who smiled at Alex's snide comments, who rested a warm hand on Alex's arm and leaned in to suggest going somewhere quieter to talk.

Someone who kissed back. Someone who said, "My room's upstairs."

A fairytale would end there. Alex's story ends like this:

Next morning. Huge hangover. Swear never to drink again.

Stumble out of bed. Find shirt, pants and left shoe. Search through mess on floor for right shoe.

Find it sitting beside a bright red backpack. A backpack with badges pinned to it. A half-open backpack with school books inside.

Look around. Notice it's a student's room.

Look at the bed. Notice drunk, naked, male student. Who snores.

Flee.

***

Alex tries to spot M. Scofield in his next class. He might be sitting up the back, or in the front row; might be a she, a Melissa or a Michelle.

He checks the student list for his class and finds it's Michael.

***

When Alex tells the story, it's the backpack that's always the pinnacle. He says, "So I look around, head pounding, worst hangover in history, and then I see it on the floor," and he pauses. He gives the listener a moment to get curious, to cringe in expectation.

Then he says, "It's a bright red backpack. Books and notes still in it. Can you believe it?"

That's when people chuckle or groan in sympathy. That's when it's recognized as a joke.

***

Michael Scofield remains elusive, except in written work. Alex refuses to resort to calling a roll purely for the sake of his own curiosity, so he satisfies himself with papers and in-class tests. Gathers what he can from those.

Michael's bright, sharp with numbers and neat. All practical examples are lined up perfectly -- Alex once checked with a ruler and laughed at himself for it -- inch-wide lines at the base of all his sums. When it comes to theory, he explains in terms of construction and physics.

Alex starts recognizing the handwriting and leaving those tests to last. Lets them be the last thing he reads before he pulls off his reading glasses and heads to bed.

Alex's grading stays objective, but that's the only thing that does.

***

"He was so fine," Felicia says, dark fingers tight around the plastic spoon sticking out of her cup, "but he got divorced four months ago and that's just…"

Alex watches her shrug. He smirks at her over the rim of his coffee. "Tell me you weren't going to say your Ill-Advised Backpack."

Felicia rolls her eyes. "I was going to say a recipe for disaster, but it's that, too. It's my big, white whale of things I want but I'm determined to talk myself out of."

"What?" Alex asks in surprise, coffee almost going down the wrong way. He clears his throat and then adds, "And explain without talking like a sea captain. I forgot how much I hate conversations with you when you're teaching Moby Dick."

"It's one of the dangers of befriending an English teacher. Occasional literary references mixed with uncomfortable truths."

"In terms you'll understand, that's a radical interpretation of the text," Alex bites back sharply. In case that's not clear enough, Alex also says, "I didn't talk myself out of it."

Felicia stares him down. She has the most formidable stare he's ever met. When it's not directed at him, Alex admires her for it.

"When was the last time you dated?"

Alex rolls his eyes. Obviously. So Felicia knows just how annoying this conversation is. "A drunken, frat-party hook-up doesn't count as a date."

"No, it doesn't," Felicia says, with all the intensity of Ahab. "So not counting that, when was the last time? By my count, it's two years and that's only if you count the drunken hook-up from that cowboy bar. I'm starting to think you had a better love life in the army than--"

"Don't," Alex growls out and Felicia snaps her mouth shut. On the list of things he doesn't discuss sober, that Other Than Honorable Discharge is right at the top.

"I'm not… not-dating," he says after a breath. "I'm just…"

"Picky," Felicia finishes. "Which is fine. But you met someone you liked and you ran without even getting his name. Go ahead and tell the story for laughs, but don't tell me you didn't talk yourself out of it."

There's a moment of quiet, or what passes for quiet on campus. It's late enough that most of the students are far away from this courtyard but when Alex listens closely, he can hear kids yelling, laughing, shouting in the distance.

"We have a code of conduct for a reason."

Felicia shrugs. "You wouldn't be the first teacher to break it. As long as he's not a freshman and he's not in your class, it wouldn't be that big a deal."

"He's still a student. I don't think I could bear the existential angst of what to wear to the next frat-party."

"Perfectly good reason to avoid the student populace," Felicia says, letting the matter drop.

***

Alex stops telling the backpack story.

***

In Alex's imagination, Michael Scofield is charismatic with curly blond hair and an all-American, home-team quarterback smile. He has a wide square jaw and thick, meaty biceps.

Of course that's a lie. None of the kids in his class look like that.

But it's a nice enough lie that Alex secretly hopes he'll never meet Michael Scofield. It would be disappointing to connect the brilliant fantasy inside his head to some skinny, weedy kid with greasy skin and a horrible tendency to say "dude" all the time.

***

Correction: he mostly stops telling the backpack story.

Sometimes, when women start to make those not-so-subtle hints about being single, he still uses it to make them laugh and drift away.

***

The Thanksgiving break comes and Alex finds himself surrounded by Felicia's relatives. At this point, it's a tradition. The first time she invited him, he'd only been at the school about three months and out of the army three years, still bitter and angry about it. He'd had three years of calling his folks at Thanksgiving and listening to the phone hung up on him; three years of sending out Christmas cards and having them returned to sender by January.

Despite his hostility towards holidays, Felicia had badgered him into coming and he'd understood why when he met her matchmaking aunts. He'd played along and now, four Thanksgiving dinner's later, everyone's used to seeing "Felicia's Alex".

It's always crowded, with way too many adults packed into a too small house and at least a dozen kids out in the yard, hollering at each other. There are Felicia's two brothers and three sisters, her twenty-odd cousins, and then there are in-laws, aunts, uncles, grandparents and second-cousins. The family's huge and the day's chaotic, but it's relaxed. There's always far too much food and not enough space to sit down, but it's the highlight of Alex's fall semester.

Except this year Alex finds himself out on the porch, leaning against the corner railing, happy for a little bit of peace. This year Alex finds himself thinking about how his life might have been if he hadn't been stupid enough to get discharged, if he hadn't been stubborn enough to argue it, refusing to back down until he crashed and burned. If he'd served out his last term and come home successful, with his head held high, if he'd met Felicia then...

There's part of him that thinks he'd be here, a genuine part of the family. Or maybe back home in Massachusetts visiting his folks with a couple of kids, watching them play the doting grandparents.

Or maybe he'd have found a different way to screw himself over. He does seem to have a talent for it.

***

The rest of the semester passes surprisingly fast. It always does. It's a downhill rush from Thanksgiving break to setting exam questions to classes being over and Alex stuck in his office, marking exam after exam of messy handwriting and dubious figures. He gets through the freshmen and the sophomore pile with only three calls to Felicia, threatening to make every future exam a hundred percent multiple choice (to make his grading easier).

Halfway through the junior pile, he gets a call from Felicia, saying, "Of the many, many themes present in Moby Dick, bestiality is not one of them."

It surprises a laugh out of Alex. "A man's love for his whale? There's got to be a market for that somewhere."

"But not in my class," Felicia complains. "I have an entire essay on bestiality."

"I'm trying to work out the logistics of that." He leans back in his chair, stretches his arms up and then drops his pen to his desk. It's not that he doesn't sympathize with Felicia, it's that she's fun to needle and it's nice to watch someone else deal with idiot students. Stretching and flexing his fingers against the ache of constant writing, Alex smirks and says, "I mean, how would you even--"

Felicia talks through him. "Don't go there, Alex. Really. Some of these kids, they're just not right."

"Ask me, there just isn't enough written about a guy getting it on with a whale," Alex says, turning his head and stretching his neck to the side. That's when he notices someone standing in his doorway.

The kid looks surprised and amused. Alex knows how fast rumors spread around campus. In the faculty room tomorrow, there'll be fish jokes, he's sure of it.

"I've gotta go," he tells Felicia, and she snorts and says, "Don't forget lunch," as he hangs up.

The kid is fresh-faced and he looks young, even for a college student. He's holding a folder in his hands, so Alex waves him in. He figures the kid's probably here to hand in a late assignment and argue against a fail mark.

"Mr. Mahone," the kid starts, which makes Alex feel a lot older than he is, "there was something I didn't understand. I was hoping you could explain it." The kid eyes the mountain of answer booklets on Alex's desk, and adds, "If you have time."

"Call me Alex."

The kid -- Alex is struggling to place the face; he doesn't know the names of most of his students, but generally he can match a face to a class -- pulls out one of the in-class tests Alex used as preparation for the exam, and Alex spots the handwriting.

Alex looks up again.

He hadn't pictured Michael Scofield like this: baby-faced with soft, dark lips. His hair is cropped short in a style Alex particularly hates, hated it ever since he had it as a new recruit. It's an ugly, unflattering style but it doesn't add any hardness to Michael Scofield's features. It only highlights the soft curve of jaw.

Alex doesn't need to look at the test to know which question Michael's talking about. "The question was to calculate simple depreciation and you got the answer wrong."

"It was right," Michael says confidently. He flips through pages and Alex notices long fingers, soft hands, a kid who hasn't done much outside work.

Michael stops at the question, turns the booklet around.

It's just as Alex remembers: neat, perfectly spaced figures across the page, filled with equations that Alex couldn't recognize and certainly didn't understand.

"I worked out the depreciation," Michael says, pointing to the one formula Alex knows inside-out.

"The question stated the relevant depreciation rate, and you used something else. Your answer was wrong." Alex points to the question, to the '20 years' stated clearly in black-on-white.

"But the building would maintain structural integrity for more than twenty years. Given that it's a five-storey office building built fifteen years ago, and the standard foundation practices in Chicago at that time, that building should stand for at least another 38.4 years."

"Giving it a useful life of 53 years?" Alex casually rubs a hand across his mouth and tries not to smile. The 1.87% depreciation rate suddenly makes sense, in a strangely literal way. Of all the ways people have lost marks on his tests, calculating the structural integrity of a building is completely new. "When the question said to choose your depreciation method, you were expected to use the standard rate and choose between straight line or diminishing value."

"It was more accurate."

"But what did you sacrifice for the accuracy?" Alex leaves the question hanging. If Michael's as smart as Alex thinks he is, he'll get it.

Michael doesn't disappoint. "Comparability," he says after a moment. "Unless all companies calculate their depreciation rate that way, you can't compare one financial report to another."

"Making the information less useful overall." Alex shrugs. "Unfortunately, I can't give marks for original thought."

He hands the pages back to Michael and for a moment, has that awkward feeling of wanting to start a conversation even though he has nothing to say. Alex sits back down in his chair and looks at the stack of exams, reminds himself that he still has work to do. And Michael Scofield is bound to be far less interesting than Alex has imagined.

So he doesn't say anything as Michael takes back the booklet, swings a red backpack from his shoulder and stuffs the pages inside.

Loyola isn't a particularly small college. There are probably hundreds of red backpacks that shape and size. Probably a lot of students pin badges on the outside, in that precise pattern. And while Alex is trying to convince himself of this, he looks at Michael's long artful fingers, at his full, inviting lips, and thinks, "Oh, crap."

Except maybe he says that last bit out loud.

Michael freezes. Then he looks up and his features harden, just a little. He blinks. "You remembered my bag? Not me, but my bag?"

"I was pretty drunk," Alex says, and it's only half a joke.

"I remember."

There's a long stretch of silence where Alex feels queasy with guilt. Not guilt for what he did, not precisely, but… he didn't remember. He hadn't tried to remember, he hadn't wanted to.

Michael zips the backpack closed, shrugs it onto one shoulder. "It's not a big deal."

Alex can feel a headache coming on. He knows this is the point where he's supposed to act; when he tells Felicia, this is the point where she'll say, _'And you just stood there, did nothing? Poor kid.'_ so he asks, "You took the class because of me?"

Michael shrugs. His left shoulder -- the shoulder with the backpack -- moves a little higher than his right. Alex tries not to let himself get distracted by that detail. "I figured you might have meant to ask for my number. Maybe you didn't realize you hadn't given me yours. After the second week of you looking right through me, I got the message."

Alex doesn't try the defense that he genuinely hadn't recognized Michael. He'd treated Michael like a disposable one-night stand; telling him he was completely unmemorable wouldn't make it any better. "I don't date students," Alex says instead.

"You just occasionally screw them?" Michael blinks, and then adds, "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

Alex shrugs. He can't help thinking it's a justified reaction. "Hard as it may be to hear, it's nothing personal. I don't date students. That's the end of it."

"I thought you might say that." Michael pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and passes it to Alex. It's folded into a small, precise square, but the pale blue lines suggest it's been ripped out of someone's notebook.

There's a cell number on it. "What's this?" Alex asks, although he recognizes the handwriting, knows what those sharp, clear figures must be.

"My number." Michael turns and walks out, but at the doorway, he pauses and smiles over his shoulder. "Just so you know, I graduate in January."

***

Alex considers not calling. Thinks about throwing the number out and lying to Felicia.

Except he doesn't generally lie to Felicia. Felicia's seen him at his worst: drunk and so angry he punched a hole through his wall, pathetically hung-over and miserable. She's laughed at him when he was dying of a head cold, but she still brought him chicken soup.

He knows that if he told Felicia, she'd weasel the truth out of him. Eventually, he'd have to admit that he wants this and it's been a while since he really, really wanted something. He fell into teaching -- he likes it, but he fell into it; he never wanted it the way he wanted to serve -- and maybe he's a little bit scared.

He knows how much it hurts to lose something you really want. And maybe Felicia's right. Maybe he's been hiding for a while.

So he calls.

***

Alex warns Michael about Felicia's annual 'Sad and Single' Valentine's Party but they still end up going. For the first time, Alex is neither sad nor single and it shows. In the middle of conversation, Alex finds himself scanning the room for Michael -- in the kitchen, helping Felicia open bottles of wine -- and smiling when Michael glances over and raises an eyebrow at him.

When his friends ask the standard questions of "How did it start?" and "Where did you meet?" Alex tells them it started with the depreciation of a building.

Or, maybe, it started with a backpack.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave feedback here or on [Livejournal](http://out-there.livejournal.com/1070008.html?mode=reply).
> 
>   
>   
>   
>  **LJ Entry tags:** |  [prison break fic](http://out-there.livejournal.com/tag/prison+break+fic)  
> ---|---


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